The Nativity and the Procession of the Magi

Images(2)

The Nativity and the Procession of the Magi

Artist Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi) Italian, 1444/1445–1510

Date1480s

MediumTempera on panel

DimensionsDiameter: 49 1/2 in. (125.7 cm)
Frame Diameter: 70 1/8 in. (178.1 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineGift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Object numberGL.60.17.26

On View

On view

ProvenanceCreated Italy, 1444/1445–1510; John Francis Austen (1817–1893), Capel Manor, Horsmonden, Kent, by 1893 [1]; [Austen estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, March 18, 1921, lot 77, unsold] [2]; [Christie, Manson & Woods, London July 10, 1931, lot 45]; [Smith] [3]. Possibly the Lord Crawford and Balcarres Collection, London, after 1931 [4]. [International Financing Co., S. A., Panama, possibly a shell company for the estate of Alessandro Contini Bonacossi] [5]; Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York, November 30, 1956, inv. no. K2155 [6]; Kress Foundation gift to NCMA, 1961.

[1] Kress digital record: https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/3323. Lent by Charlotte Austen, née Tucker and widow of John Francis Austen, to the 1893-1894 exhibition “Early Italian Art” at the New Gallery, London, cat. 30. John Francis Austen is distantly related to the novelist Jane Austen. John Francis’s great-grandfather was the uncle and guardian of Jane Austen’s father.

[2] “Catalogue of Important Italian Pictures of the Late J. F. Austen, Esq. of Capel Manor, Horsmonden, Kent (Sold by Order of the Trustees),” 1921, lot 77. Annotated copy lists and amount for which it was sold and “Wells,” though the painting was unsold. Roberts, 2009, p. 610, lists the painting as unsold.

[3] Christie’s 1931, lot 45. Smith is listed as the buyer in two different annotated sale catalogue copies (photocopies in curatorial file). Lightbown, 1978, p. 135 states that the painting was sold to “Briggs.”

[4] Source of this information is Kress Foundation paperwork furnished to the NCMA. It is repeated in Shapley 1960; Shapley 1966; Yeide 2015. As noted by Yeide as well as in the Kress Digital Record, the painting does not appear in the sale catalogue of the David Lindsay/ Crawford and Balcarres estate sale held at Christie's, London, 11 October 1946. According to Charles Sebag-Montefiore, the painting is not listed in any of the inventories of the Lindsay family collection, and it unlikely to have entered and exited the collection within such a brief period of time (1931 to 1956).

[5] Kress digital record: https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/3323. Evidence for a connection between the International Financing Company and estate of Alessandro Contini Bonacossi is that Contini Bonacossi’s lawyer in New York, a man named Renzo Rava, of Florentine origin, is the attorney for Kress recorded in both letters and the invoice for the group of works purchased by the Kress Foundation in 1956 from the International Financing Company, Panama City.

[6] Kress digital record: https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/3323.

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